What Makes Content Shareable? A Donald Trump Analysis

When looking to produce content that works (by this I mean driving engagements, conversation and shares) it’s often useful to review pieces performing well in a particular field and seeing what we can learn from them.

To show how this process can be useful – and explore recurring themes in successful content – I decided to review some highly shared articles around a popular topic, then compare the key elements which these contained.

Love him or hate him, Donald Trump’s big news. He’s been the subject of many thousands of stories over the past year, so where better to look for characteristics of effective content than in the pieces about him which have generated the most shares?

In order to carry out this review, I’ll use the amazing BuzzSumo to find and analyse the 50 most shared pieces of content about Donald Trump over the last 6 months.

I will not distinguish between news and marketing content for this review, and will look at features of the text alone, rather than the publication or likely budget of each piece, although of course these will have had some impact on how much posts were shared.

What I looked for

In their bestselling book “Made to Stick”, Chip and Dan Heath came up with 6 “SUCCESs” principles which sticky ideas (those which are memorable, meaningful and influential) have in common. The content reviewed in my analysis is likely to be sticky – evidenced by thousands of people going out of their way to share it – so I first decided to check each piece for the existence of these 6 elements.

According to the Heath Brothers, the features which the best ideas contain either all or some of are simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotion, and the ability to tell a story. For what each of these exactly refers to, here it is in the authors’ own words.

As well as looking out for these aspects in each piece, I tallied up those which weren’t covered by Chip and Dan Heath’s list, but still seemed to come up frequently in high-performing content.

What I found:

First off, using the SUCCESs model, I was amazed to discover that every single piece of content contained at least two of the Heath Brothers’ 6 sticky principles. It seems they did their homework! The number of stories featuring each element can be seen in the graph below:

Concreteness also showed up a lot in the analysis (content which had an unambiguous human meaning and tangibility). Two examples of this can be seen in a petition to block Donald Trump from UK entry, and an article called “How America Made Donald Trump Unstoppable”, both of which paint a clear picture in the reader’s head.

Unexpectedness is something which goes hand in hand with Donald Trump’s rise to success, and many of the posts written about him held up to this trait too. Trump’s claim that he could shoot someone and not lose voters, a picture of him composed entirely of penises, and the surprise emptiness of a post named “10 Reasons Donald Trump Should Be Our Next President” show how reporting on (or creating) the unexpected can prove effective when looking to create shareable content.

Finally, emotion. Several of the articles studied pulled hard on the heartstrings, whilst others gave furious personal arguments against Trump. The story of a Muslim girl crying after seeing a trump rally, then being consoled by a soldier was one of these emotional pieces, as well as a personal plea from a Christian man not to vote “Godless Man” Donald Trump into power.

Elements Missing from SUCCESs

As for other notable features which did not show up in the “SUCCESs” model, below are the 5 that I most frequently discovered.

Just over half of the content pieces reviewed either reported on – or created – controversy. An artwork of Donald Trump made up entirely of penises was one of the more blatant examples I came across, whilst the excellently written “Decency for president”, where a pastor claimed that if Donald Trump was his daughter’s date, he’d “send him away. I’d tell my daughter to stay home” was controversial in its personal criticism of a possible future American president.

Humour

Posts with a clear element of humour came up 15 times in the reviewed content. My personal favourites were Stephen Colbert’s “Trump v. Trump Debate” and a number of posts suggesting places to live if Donald Trump were to take office.

Although limited to pieces created in a specific niche, and to my personal interpretation of content, this analysis has given some interesting insights into the sort of posts which are likely to be shared online.

Firstly, I’ve found plenty to suggest that Chip and Dan Heath’s SUCCESs model is a good one to follow when looking to create shearable content. Second, it seems from this research that (when appropriate within brand guidelines) creating content at opportune moments, which incorporates humour, controversy, conflict or negativity could give your content a leg up in terms of shareability too.

Finally, and most simply of all, I’ve found that BuzzSumo is great! It makes it easy to find high-performing pages relating to a topic, to analyse why these may be popular, and to find inspiration for elements which it could be worth adding to your own content.

About Jack Telford

Jack Telford is a Digital Content Executive at Digital Marketing Agency theMediaFlow, where he specialises in the research, planning and creation of content marketing material. He blogs on topics related to SEO, creativity, digital content and social media.

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Social media strategy will make to increase the sales tune. With this effective social media you can do the ability with most intrinsic. Here are some reason which makes social trigger more motivation. Your content should be social validation, entertainment, should contain practical value, and you should belief and causes and that will make users to get interest. By following these techniques you can make your content shareable

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